


Funeral Shoes

by hoc_voluerunt



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Drabble Collection, Episode: s01e01 A Study in Pink, Episode: s02e02 The Hounds of Baskerville, Episode: s02e03 The Reichenbach Fall, Gen, I'm sorry I have so many feelings about John's wardrobe, Reichenbach Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-03
Updated: 2013-06-03
Packaged: 2017-12-13 20:26:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/828508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoc_voluerunt/pseuds/hoc_voluerunt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of observations on John's wardrobe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Funeral Shoes

            When Sherlock first looks at the man, he sees a neat, check shirt, and decent jeans, and a grey jacket a little thin for the weather. He sees a tan and a cane, a military bearing, an education in medicine. He sees boots, brown and sturdy, nothing to the combat boots the man would’ve worn in – Afghanistan? Iraq? – but comfortable, reliable, clean. A little expensive for someone looking for a flatshare, but perhaps they were an extravagance, to celebrate a promotion or a relationship, a birthday, a holiday, a survival, a new career.

            He says his name is John Watson, and he passes over his phone with unnerving ease, and Sherlock thinks: _He’ll do._ He wonders how long it will take before this doctor-soldier is driven away, and figures it isn’t worth assuming the level of acquaintance it would take for Sherlock to start keeping body parts in a communal fridge.

            He glances again at John’s boots, and hits _Delete._

 

            And then – oh, _then._

 

            Sherlock steps out of the cab, and there he is, Doctor John Watson, knocking at Mrs Hudson’s door with those same boots, that same cane, the same well-fitting jeans and buttoned collar. There’s an added jumper this time, a fluffy, knitted, oatmeal thing, padding him up.

            Most incongruous of all, however, is his jacket.

            It is expensive in a way Sherlock’s suits will never be: exquisitely-made, and entirely unostentatious. The patches of leather are in the design of a firing jacket, and Sherlock’s estimation of John’s military career rises a notch or two. Perhaps this, too, was an indulgence, like the boots – celebration of an officer’s rank, perhaps, bought on the novel income of a lieutenant, maybe a captain. Sherlock wonders if John wore it on purpose, what made him choose this simple piece of armour instead of the drab, grey number from the day before. Did he wear it in anticipation, or defence? Did he wear it for Sherlock? _Because of_ Sherlock? Was he intimidated, or – far more likely, says Sherlock’s gut – rising sternly to the challenge?

            Sherlock watches John’s boots on the front step, sees them shuffle and limp their way up seventeen steps, and can’t help but think of the flat as _theirs._

            He asks John along to a crime scene, just to confirm the hypothesis. He’s right. As always.

 

            It takes until after Moriarty – after explosives on innocent Londoners, and a pool, and the unspoken agreement to go out in flames, _together_ – for John to finally start branching out. There’s a whole section, Sherlock realises, of John’s wardrobe that he’s never been allowed to see. It happens gradually – a shirt here, a jumper there. John buys a new pair of boots, less rigid and heavy, and more modern, with suede and light shoelaces, and white soles that make it look like he’s flying when he runs. He begins to relinquish his firing jacket; Sherlock is unsure whether he should be pleased, or quietly disappointed. But if it means John is living less in soldier mode and more as a civilian – if it means he’s less willing to take orders, and more ready to live a halfway-reasonable life – it also means he’s become comfortable enough in 221B to start spreading his wings. If he doesn’t always need the protection of a firing jacket when they go out, it seems a greater indication that, defying all expectations, he’s well and truly decided to stay.

 

            There is a pair of shoes John rarely wears, and this is _fascinating._ They are neat and shiny, a prim pair of oxfords, the colour of mahogany or walnut wood. The detailing is careful, precise and unostentatious. They look almost sombre under John’s jeans, heavier than his usual boots, and weaker, showing sock-clad ankles. Sherlock teases John about them, the second time they appear, worn in the sitting room and nowhere else. _“Those are new,”_ he sneers. _“Going to a funeral, are we?”_ John scowls, and steadfastly wears them for a week straight: around the flat, out for the shopping, to the clinic. Lestrade calls them about a body in a car boot, and John even wears them out to Southwark; and promptly ends up treading through enough mud and oil and industrial muck that it takes him two hours to clean them and they never leave John’s wardrobe again.

 

            The new boots follow them to Dartmoor, along with a spare shirt, a jumper, a change of underwear and socks, and _three jackets._ John layers them on for the night-dark moor, gloves wrapped snug around someone else’s gun, and Sherlock decides, in the flare of a landmine still not yet faded from his retinas, that John needs a coat. Not a large, expensive article like his – Sherlock’s Belstaff is far too dramatic, too grand, for quiet, hidden John. (The thought, however, inspires the perverse mental image of John in Sherlock’s coat, the black wool swamping him like a child in costume.) But John definitely needs something warmer than his layers of jumpers and jackets; something for freezing nights in an unfamiliar room, shivering away the vestiges of a paranoia-inducing drug. Sherlock saw Moriarty’s face in that fog, and he can only wonder what John is seeing now, trembling in the other bed. It is four in the morning, and he decides that a coat will do nicely for cold winter mornings and recurring nightmares.

 

            John is barefoot the day Moriarty sees fit to contact them again. It is terrifically rare for him to emerge from the bathroom in less than pyjamas, or jeans and a white t-shirt, and Sherlock takes smug pleasure every time he sees John’s bare legs flash on his way back up to his room. And then John is naked but for his bathrobe and a pair of pants, and the shuttered expression we wears as he holds out Sherlock’s phone and says _“He’s back.”_

            Moriarty has tarnished John’s nudity, and Sherlock would gladly murder him for that alone.

 

            It all happens so quickly. It comes as such a shock. That he could be bested like this, in one fell swoop, in a few meagre days, in one night. (John had bought a new suit for the court case, and Sherlock had quietly rejoiced that he’d forgone that hideous brown number he called _nice.)_ His head aches as if it really had been crushed against the pavement, even though that was hours ago, days ago, a week and more ago. The false blood has been washed away, Molly’s bone china hands have meticulously set out everything they’ll need to shear Sherlock’s curls down to ginger stubble, and Sherlock is still, unbelievably, reeling. (He’d worn his firing jacket again; hadn’t needed it against a demon hound, but he’d needed it here, oh, he’d needed it here, a little black dot against the asphalt, too far to reach, too far, all too far.) He sneaks out of Molly’s flat while she’s at work – he’s seen the notice in the paper, knows the placement of his own grave, has covertly sent out a few spies to tell him when John leaves the flat. He’s waiting, when John and Mrs Hudson appear, to say their farewells.

 

            As it turns out, the walnut shoes _are_ for funerals.


End file.
